A New Year’s Day Reality Check

I don’t know about you all, but this has been a long season of eating, drinking, and being merry.

Between Thanksgiving, a trip to Texas, Hanukkah and Christmas, I feel like if I had to describe my efforts at eating healthfully and working out in one word, it would be Subsistence. I 100% do not regret any of the things I’ve gotten to eat or do over the last five weeks but it is absolutely catching up to me. My skin is in open revolt, my December running mileage was drastically lower than the other months (four days in a car will do that to you), and I have no idea what my normal routine is actually supposed to look like anymore.

This morning, I decided that I was going to grab a snap from my stint as a member of the 2008 University of Minnesota Homecoming Court in honor of Throwback Thursday and our New Year’s Day bowl game. As I picked through the trove of pictures from fall/winter of 2008, my heart sank as I looked at one photo after another of a girl who was 70 pounds heavier.

I don’t go through college photos in general, but one after the next, for hundreds of photos this went on. For some reason this year, it was more difficult as I scrutinized each one, looking for hints of unhappiness. But the thing is, I wasn’t unhappy at the time. The reality is that in my senior year of college, my health and my body were my absolute last priority. Between a full credit load, working 30 hours a week, being active in my sorority, taking conversion classes, and spending time with Marcus, these things did not even come close to making the list.

Sometimes we’re doing the best we can with what we have.

If ever I needed a reality check, that was a great one. As the holiday haze wears off, I may be looking at myself in the mirror and asking What happened to you? That’s a fair question, I think. But it absolutely made me take a step back, put the claws away, and think about what it is that I really need right now. The answer to that question is extremely simple: I crave a return to routine. New routine, old routine, a combination of the two, I’m not terribly picky. I just want to get back to that ordinary place, whatever it is that ordinary looks like in 2015.